As The Old Saying Goes…

He who represents himself in court has an idiot for a lawyer and a fool for a client

LOS ANGELES – A judge overturned a nearly $10,000 small-claims judgment against American Honda Motor Co. that was won by a car owner who said the automaker misrepresented the gas mileage of her hybrid Civic, according to a ruling released Wednesday.

I’d guess that at least in Honda’s mind, it wasn’t the amount, it was the idea of encouraging people to sue in lieu of accepting the rather paltry class action settlement. Probably a sound strategy.

Peters, a lawyer, previously urged Honda owners to take the small-claims route as she did, and her initial success led some 1,700 other hybrid owners to follow suit.

I wonder how many of those 1,700 are now likely to sue Peters?

This could go on for years.

Read the whole article, it’s pretty interesting. The judge refuted every one of Peters’ Points (try saying that three times fast) with not only logic and law, but common sense.

Comments

I knew before I clicked on the article what’s Honda’s successful argument was. I think it’s valid, too.

If the .gov is going to test cars and tell you what the fuel mileage is, who is Honda to disagree? The problem lies with the testing methods that give an inflated result. Honda designed and built a car, the government said what sort of fuel economy the car was capable of, why did she sue Honda?

Underneath all that, everyone knows that real world gas mileage has nothing to do with EPA estimated city/hwy numbers. To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, “You have buy the car and drive it to find out the gas mileage.”

The EPA mileage estimates are guesstimates at best. Maybe they are useful for comparison purposes, but that’s about it.

All About Me

After a long career as a field EMS provider, I'm now doing all that back office stuff I used to laugh at. Life is full of ironies, isn't it?
I still live in the Northeast corner of the United States, although I hope to change that to another part of the country more in tune with my values and beliefs.
I still write about EMS, but I'm adding more and more non EMS subject matter.
Thanks for visiting. Read More…